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I've been simming the 1994 season on Diamond Mind, but taking the Royals in a different direction based on trade rumors from old Sporting News articles. The Expos and Astros are dominating. I'm trying to tear down the Royals and do a complete rebuild, but we're in first place halfway through the year thanks to a Ryan Klesko for Jeff Montgomery trade.

Recently, I started re-watching the postseason on MLB.TV, starting with the Rays-Rangers tiebreaker. I don't particularly root for any team that made the postseason last year, and I missed a lot of the games in real-time due to other obligations, so it's kind of fun being able to watch at my own pace, check out the nuances and quirks of the different players, plus fast forwarding through the commercials really speeds things up.

Dave Studeman posted the following on Hardball Times in November:

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/must-see-mlb.tv-2013/

In his words, "a list of the 150 most watchable games from last year. These games were ranked by the total number of swings in Win Probability as well as the average Leverage Index of each play. In non-geek speak, these games featured the biggest swings in leads along with the most intense, close plays. The pennant race wasn't taken into account, but you can pick games from late in the season, or ones that featured your favorite teams."

I started and watched a few at the top of the list. Spoiler alert: most of the games at the top of the list were REALLY long. But those types of crazy games can be fun to watch as well, and again, you can fast forward through commericals and pitching changes. Double Spoiler alert: Casper Wells kept showing up in really weird situations.

I decided to switch over to the Postseason and re-watch that and will probably go back to the Must-See MLB.TV list afterwards.

I'm currently about 15 games into an OOTP14 season as the Toronto Blue Jays.
(It was a Steam sale gift around Xmas.)
I dealt J.P.Arencibia for Ryan Roberts before the season started. I didn't want to have to fight the urge punch my monitor like I wanted to do during the real 2013 season when J.P. was up to bat...

I am currently playing or drafting in several DMB leagues (plus one OOTP league); I would much rather do this than watch football, although I will watch some basketball or soccer. Back when I was a Cub fan, and most of the games were on WGN, I would record most of the home games to watch that evening. I used to keep some of the more memorable games rather than tape over them; then I would watch these games during the winter. I probably still have some of the tapes, even if I no longer have a VCR.

I probably watched my VHS copy of "Baseball in the 80s" 100 times when I was a kid. (The one where the 1989 World Series earthquake happens on 'Interstate Eight-Eighty.') I sure wish I could dig that up again.

For me, rolling games of strat o matic board game version beats all other alternatives. Recently a friend gave me every set of strat cards that he's ever owned. He had to get them out of his house as his mother-in-law was moving in and needed the basement area previously reserved for his hobbies. Imagine Fred Flintstone grumbling "I love my mother in law, I love my mother in law" over and over to convince himself, when actually he couldn't stand her.

Like Howard, I am married with small children. So finding time to play the simulations can be a challenge. But when I find the time it is sooooo worth it.

Just began playing the 1961 season of strat cards published back in 1962. Should the cards be put in plastic card protectors? Probably. 1961 Angels have a fun expansion team to play with. Many of the players had nice slash stats: Albie Pearson, Steve (Sergent) Bilko, George Thomas, Leon Wagner, Lee Thomas, Ken Hunt. Not much pitching to speak of all thought having Ryan Duran in the pen makes it interesting late in the game. How many batters will he walk today?

I use a PC at work all day long. So PC based sim's just don't do it for me. Rolling the dice and doing the stats on Excel is a great escape from the everyday grind.

I've been thinking about buying a computer sim for baseball, anybody have an opinion OOTP or Baseball Mogul?

I prefer DMB for realistic sim play on a year-to-year basis, but OOTP is pretty fun for dynasties, although perhaps not as realistic. I have never played Baseball Mogul. OOTP would be pretty hard to beat I would think, its pretty comprehensive.

Does DMB have projection seasons for past year? Like say, if I wanted to play a world where guys like Roberto Petagine get a fair shake, is that possible? Right now the past season disks are only based on actual performance, and the small sample size prevents a guy like Petagine from being very good.

Like just about everybody else in this thread, I play baseball sims. I'm still working on a 1924 Skeetersoft NP3 (cards and dice) replay, though it's been a few months since I've had the time to roll a game or two. DMB is excellent for the offseason, as is OOTP.

I also like collecting broadcasts of old games. I've got well over 1,000 MP3s of old radio games, going back to 1934. I don't know how many recordings of TV broadcasts of vintage games I have, though it's at least several hundred. I prefer radio games, however.

I also like to lurk on BBTF.

EDIT: #11, please let me know if you find any of your old tapes. I will pay money for them.

Also, as for OOTP versus Mogul, I'd recommend OOTP. It's been a little while since I last tried Mogul (probably 2009), but it left such a bad taste in my mouth that I doubt I'll ever try it again. OOTP is a lot of fun as a management sim, though the in-game baseball engine is extremely lacking. If you are looking for a good management game, go for OOTP. If you want to sim individual games, though, look at DMB or Action or something similar.

That's a great link, especially since he had the restraint to just list the games without any description so I can watch them without knowing what's going to happen.

As for Strat:

1) I got the Negro League set for Christmas, it's fantastic. Easily the best production values for any strat set, with colourful glossy cards and a handy guide that contains brief bios of all the players in the set.

2) A while ago I discovered that someone tried to replicate strat's Hall of Fame set (eg: make one card out of a player's 7 year peak) with Japanese players. It was released for free for both the PC version and as a PDF you can print off to make your own cards. It has everyone from Sawamura to Oh to Darvish. I haven't had a chance to play with them yet, but I've discovered that NPB players had the best nicknames: Unruly Buffalo, The Balance Scale, The Iron Shogun, The Precision Machine, Mr. Red Helmet, The Messiah, The Lone Wolf, Headhunter, Heartbeat, and The Human Tank.

OOTP is definitely better than Baseball Mogul in every way but one: complexity. Baseball Mogul is simpler and faster and still fun. If you have time, go with OOTP. It's just better. If you don't have a lot of time, then go with Mogul. It's solid and way way simpler which, if you're like me, is definitely a big plus. I miss going down the rabbit hole with OOTP but hey gotta' make sacrifices somewhere.

A while ago I discovered that someone tried to replicate strat's Hall of Fame set (eg: make one card out of a player's 7 year peak) with Japanese players. It was released for free for both the PC version and as a PDF you can print off to make your own cards. It has everyone from Sawamura to Oh to Darvish. I haven't had a chance to play with them yet, but I've discovered that NPB players had the best nicknames: Unruly Buffalo, The Balance Scale, The Iron Shogun, The Precision Machine, Mr. Red Helmet, The Messiah, The Lone Wolf, Headhunter, Heartbeat, and The Human Tank.

I got halfway through my comment, read @19, and started nodding myself. If you're a Phillies fan, there's also ClassicPhilliesTV if you want to nod more. And have acid flashbacks related to PRISM and Jay Johnstone.

The thing I hate about Mogul is that (unless they've fixed it in recent additions) it's so easy to trade a lot of a crap for a really good player. I suppose you could impose self-restraint, but I'd rather just stick to OOTP.